Glass Bros. business has been a fixture in the Fifth Ward for almost 50 years

A LANDMARK'S WANING ERAWatermelon's last stand?

PEGGY GRODINSKY, Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, June 29, 2005

For many Houstonians, summer is nigh when the magnolias bloom and the temperature hits the 90s and stays put. But in one corner of the city -- a neighborhood that has seen few ups and more than its share of downs -- locals gauge the season by Raymond Glass.

Every May for the past 46 years, Glass has unlocked the door to his tin-roofed watermelon stand in the Northside section of the Fifth Ward. He's tidied up, carted out tables with big shade umbrellas, flicked on the battered interior fan, filled the salt shakers and blended his special syrup for snow cones. Then he's climbed into his truck, hauled in a load of watermelons and opened for business.

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Except for his mother-in-law's funeral, Glass never missed a day of the May-through-October, seven-days-a-week melon season. That's how his daughter, Cynthia Glass Bivins, remembers it, anyhow. Glass, who turns 80 in November, remembers it a little differently. He says he closed several times over the years to attend funerals when "my people passed," locking up the stand after hanging a black wreath on the door.

Five weeks ago, Glass -- a small, impeccably dressed man with firm convictions and a polite, friendly manner -- underwent surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor. This summer, for the first time since Elvis went into the Army and Gigi won the Academy Award for best picture, the Glass Bros. watermelon stand is shuttered.

The stand is the last of three once-thriving family businesses on a now forlorn corner of Lorraine and Chase streets, just a few minutes but a world apart from the mirrored skyscrapers of downtown Houston. Next door to the stand was Club Lorraine; the faded sign and sturdy brick building remain. Across the street stood a washateria. Both belonged to Raymond's cousin Wilbur Glass.

"We got along better than brothers," Raymond Glass explains. So when they opened the watermelon stand in 1958, they named it Glass Bros.

The menu was unchanged for 46 years: whole watermelons, sliced watermelons, the occasional cantaloupe, snow cones. The cones came in just one flavor -- a fruity blend of 21 syrups that another cousin, Evan "Sonny Boy" Glass, dreamed up.

"He could have been a millionaire several times over," Glass says of Sonny Boy, "but he'd get onto that wine."

The "Glass brothers" worked hard for their money. They offered curbside service -- you could order your melon from the comfort of your car -- and home delivery to regulars. Glass, who speaks in a gravelly voice not unlike Satchmo's, mimics an incoming order.

"When a customer drives up, I'd walk out and say, 'Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. May I help you? How much watermelon? Thank you, sir or ma'am.' And then they'd say, 'I'd like one of those with yellow meat. Or red meat. Or cantaloupes. Bring me that one. Get me another one.' And never get out of their car."

Glass prided himself on good service, and each and every fruit came with a guarantee.

"If you got a melon home and it wasn't good," Glass Bivins recalls, "you could bring it back and get another."

Raymond and Wilbur Glass grew up together in Schulenburg, members of a large, close-knit family. Raymond's grandmother had been a slave, his grandfather a cattle driver. As young men, Raymond and Wilbur came to Houston to seek their fortunes. Although they were smart and hardworking, the world was not their oyster.

But in the city's then-prosperous Fifth Ward, they spied an opportunity in melons. A cousin, H.B. Glass, grew melons back home and had a thriving business trucking them to Houston for sale. In 1958, Raymond and Wilbur leased a spot and opened their stand down the block from its current location. For poor folks it was big business, Raymond Glass says.

Three years later, they bought the current property. In the early days, the family supplied the melons. One year, Raymond Glass bought an entire field from his cousin. "I made a lot of money on it. He made a lot of money on it, too. We kept the money in the family." Glass laughs happily at the memory. In recent years, Glass has gotten his supply from the Farmers Market on Airline Drive.

The stand was actually a sideline for Glass, who also worked in construction. He used his skills to build the stand, from the stabilized-shell flooring to the chicken-wire "walls." Once somebody sliced through the wire and helped himself to 12 melons. A neighbor saw the theft and reported it to Glass, who tracked down the nimble-fingered fruit fancier and demanded restitution.

In the sweltering Houston summers, police and firemen would stop by for a slice, grandparents brought their charges for a treat, club goers cooled down with a snow cone.

"There was some of everybody," says Glass, now recuperating at Glass Bivins' plush home at Sienna Plantation in Fort Bend County. "Kids. Grown-ups. Hispanics. Blacks. Whites. The neighborhood."

"I got sick, but if I was open now, I don't know if I could make it or not," Glass says. "I could go there right now. It's like a ghost place over there. There's nobody sitting there anymore. We're about three minutes from downtown, and you sit there and you don't see nobody."

That's not entirely true. A few days later, Glass' caregiver drives him to the neighborhood to check on the stand and the rental properties he owns on the block. Someone has stolen a table; Glass is not pleased. But he's glad that Wilbur Jr. has kept the grass around the place cut, and when he flicks on the fan, pounds the rickety scale used to weigh the melons (releasing a cloud of dust) and slides open the snow-cone window, things seem to be in good working order.

A small, steady stream of people stops by. Everybody knows Glass. One tells me he ate at Glass Bros. watermelon stand as a boy, then worked there. He compares the place to "old-time doughnut shops and burger shops. This isn't a corporation; it's a personal thing. And the watermelons are fresh. They don't come from all over the country."

Glass, ever the sharp-eyed businessman, has already told me several times that employees aren't what they used to be: "I can't find anybody worth a dime.

"See that fellow you was talking to?" he says later. "He used to work for me until I caught him sleeping."

Glass' children know better than anybody that their dad is a demanding boss. As kids they were expected to work at the stand, like it or not. To this day they feel guilty when they buy a watermelon at the grocery store.

"I think I started working there when I was 10," Glass Bivins says.

"Of course, we didn't like it, because it was hot. It was pretty boring. We had to sweep the floor and the outside, to make sure the place was clean. We had to greet the customers with a smile, even though we didn't want to be there. It was a good experience, although we didn't appreciate it at the time."

Today, Glass Bivins is senior litigation counsel for Shell Oil. Her sister, Gladys, is a retired schoolteacher. Her brother Roderick is a criminal-defense attorney in San Antonio. Raymond Glass Jr. is principal of Harper Alternative School in Houston.

"And we all started off at the watermelon stand," Glass Bivins says.

Roderick, the youngest, credits his mother, too. His parents were married for 52 years. "My mother's deal was education, and my dad's deal was hard work. It made a good combination."

In its heyday, Glass Bros. sold some 500 melons a week. Last summer, business dwindled to 50 a week, "if it was that many," according to Raymond Jr. Regulars had died or moved away; the neighborhood had been down on its luck so long that few people even remembered the good years. Glass reduced slice size but not price, driving away a few customers. And he was fighting a battle with lung cancer, all the while insisting that his children drive him to the stand after chemotherapy treatments. Glass no longer needed to rely on watermelons for his livelihood, but his little corner of Northside is home, family, achievement, memory.

Which is not to say that he's lost his head for business.

"Glass Bros. did fairly well. We survived this past year," he said, soberly assessing the 2004 season. "We didn't make a lot of money, but we paid all our bills and had some money left. Not like we should, but we didn't lose any."

Meanwhile, back in Northside, the talk is of fruit.

"I miss my watermelons," said Julia Thomas, who stopped by to say hello to "Old Man Glass," as he sometimes refers to himself.

"Baby, we miss the watermelons. People be coming by asking about the watermelons."

The Fourth of July marks the annual peak of watermelon sales in Texas. Here are three Chronicle-tested recipes to spice up your picnics and barbecues.

WATERMELON-FETA SALAD

Chronicle kitchen-tested recipe.

This is a pretty, very summery salad with several assertive tastes. You can use the mint leaves whole or shred them slightly.

Trim the thickest stems from the watercress and discard. Toss the watercress with the mint leaves and the watermelon cubes.

In a small jar, shake the oil, lime juice and sugar together. Drizzle over the greens to dress lightly. Toss. Divide the salad among 4 plates.

Scatter the feta, scallions and pine nuts over each plate.

Makes 4 servings.

PICKLED WATERMELON RIND

Chronicle kitchen-tested recipe.

This recipe for an old Southern classic is adapted from one published by House & Garden in 1962. It's a project, but not a difficult one, and you're amply rewarded with a delicious pickle from something you'd otherwise throw away. In James Beard's American Cookery, Beard suggests basting a ham with the juice from the pickled rinds. One medium watermelon yielded 2 1/2 pints of pickles.

To prepare the watermelon, use a paring knife and vegetable peeler to scrape the pink flesh from the rind of a melon and peel the green exterior. Cut the remaining white rind into squares or rectangles slightly smaller than 1 inch. Cover the rind with cold, salted water (1/4 cup salt to 1 quart water) and leave overnight. The rind floats, so you may want to weight it down.

The next day, drain the rind and rinse off the salt. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Add the rind and boil for 10 minutes or until just tender. Drain again.

Bring the sugar, vinegar and 2 cups water to a boil in a large pot and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add the rind, citrus and spices to the pot. Maintain at a fast simmer for about 45 minutes until the rind is translucent and the liquid syrupy. Fish out the cinnamon sticks and put one in each clean jar. Add the pickles. Fill the jars with the pickling solution (you'll probably have leftover liquid). Refrigerate the pickles. Alternately, you can can the pickled rind in sterilized jars, processing them for 10 minutes in a hot-water bath.

Yield: 2 1/2 pints.

WATERMELON JUICE

Chronicle kitchen-tested recipe.

Says Chronicle food editor Peggy Grodinsky: After a hot, sweaty, weeklong camping trip in Utah several years ago, I drove to Las Vegas, where I ate dinner at the stylish Noodles restaurant in the Bellagio casino. The watermelon juice I ordered was essence of the fruit, the most refreshing thing I'd ever drunk. This is my re-creation. I played around with sweetened condensed milk and lime zest, but in the end the simplest recipe was the best.